National Poetry Month Day 4: Necrotic Icon

Who is he?

Mustachioed

Broad faced and fond of baseball

Asks every question

Big smoke, front teeth

Your car upon carved blocks and memory loss

Ropey pantsuits on the shaved chocolate floor boss

I see you're concerned now:

If there aren't vicars

There can be vicar's daughters how?

But he's not me

I am the cinnamon cartoon wolf of nasal cave fame

Razor claws raised, always just out of frame

My nose fights for roses who fight for the sun

My face fights to feel like it's the only one

My nose bulbous and guido, red frying fat

A lower case r as a bridge between that

Which is possible and Xanax and animals

Islands, channels, crackling insides

What did I do?

I stayed home and thought of tides

National Poetry Month Day 3 - If Emily Dickinson Was in the Beach Boys

So I was going to do "Emily Dickinson's Twitter", but it failed the google test spectacularly (there are probably over a dozen active Emily Dickinson twitter accounts).  Instead, let's ponder what it might have been like if Emily Dickinson was a contributing songwriter* for the Beach Boys:

*Lyrics only. If she wrote the music, every song would sound like the Gilligan's Island theme**.

**Yes, you can read every Emily Dickinson poem like the theme to Gilligan's Island. I give you permission. Sometimes, that's all you need.

"Surfin' Safari"

Let's go surfin' now
Everybody's learning how
Death doesn't stop for me
(Death doesn't stop)

Early in the morning we'll be startin' out

Some honeys will be comin' along
Success is counted sweetest

By those who don't succeed

So if you're coming get ready to go

Come on baby wait and see

(Surfin', surfin' safari)
Dare you see a soul at the white heat
(Surfin', surfin' safari)
Come along girl wait and see
(Surfin', surfin' safari)
We're gonna die before our virginity

You can go surfin' now
Think I'll just sit this one out
Gonna hang out in my room
(Gonna hang out in my)

Huntington and Malibu

Our death is near
On our headstones the moss will grow
We're goin' on safari to the islands this year
We'll safari 'till we cease to know

"Fun Fun Fun"

Well she got her daddy's car
She passed a docile row of birds on a stand now
Seems she forgot all about mortality
Like she told her old man now
Full of a liquor never brewed
Goes cruising just as fast as she can now

And she'll have fun, fun, fun
When her soul leaves like a bird from a cage
(Fun, fun, fun when her soul leaves like a bird from a cage)



"Little Deuce Coupe"

Little deuce Coupe
Will there be a morning?
Little deuce Coupe
Will there be a morning?

Well I'm not bragging babe, but the sun touched the day
My quiv'ring flames conditions, a hot ore did sate
So lest your village boast a blacksmith, don't even try
Cause between the two of you, I'd rather listen to the fly
She's my little deuce Coupe
Is there such a thing as day?
(My little deuce Coupe)
(Is there such a thing as day?)

"California Girls"

Well the east coast girls are hip
Like pigmy seraphs gone astray
And the southern girls, with the way they talk
Reminds me that we all decay
The mid-west farmer's daughters tell the truth, but on a slant
And the northern girls, with the way they kiss
The night is wide, and furnished scant

I wish they all could be made of plants and birds

I wish they all could be made of plants and birds

I wish they all could be made of plants and birds

I wish they all could be made of plants and birds

Alright, that's enough.

National Poetry Month, Day 2 - The Audience Plant

Walking the shoe-lace pattern of social evolution
Step on another tongue on the ground
Is it still mine?
Close my eyes
Plug my ears
Globe of hair
Living the ciliated social life
A panopticon of greedy, snarling faces
Like small minds contemplating wealth
The self-sorting parochial
Social justice karaoke hall
Clasping factory-made photo opportunities
Driving a fact that still drills your nose
With stinging chalky revelation
Take self-righteousness to go
The hottest club drug going
Is to never be caught not knowing
What I myself learned five minutes ago

National Poetry Month Day 1 - Morning Dew, Morning Dew

We woke up racist in a room of naked Shawns
Declaring Chaucer on a thousand vacant lawns
We make our fortune on the porch where madness dawns
Bite bite each other contrite
God scattered fossils from a box of unknown height
Breakfast of Champions for the vigilant uptight
We figure out their useful life by sight
Starlight is new blue light vibrations tender
Desire, crouching, makes the moon a public defender
We grew agnostic when succumbing to the flirts
Jesus is overweight and out of medium shirts
We hurt inside, we have a mind of severed squirts
Puddles forming bubbles
Bubbles racing language
Certain our meaning will leave us dead or stranded
We pump our own clouds, then all emerge empty handed

Existential Insult Comic

Sex and the nature of mortality can be a source of pleasure, but for you they're a source of relentless anxiety and occasional bitter laughter.

Everything you will ever accomplish is really just because of a parasite that lives in you and is hungry for achievement and validation. Achievement and validation only exist because other people with parasites make them exist.

Your need to impose your identity on everyone you meet has isolated you almost incurably. You know how when you're having sex with someone, you wish you were having sex with someone? And you think, "I'm just decadent! Like when I light one cigarette, then I light another one before the first one is even done"? Well, the person you wish you were having sex with is yourself; you've just forgotten how to recognize them.

During high school you were awkward and unpopular, but you knew you would have a bright future. Now you feel like you peaked in high school. That 90's nostalgia is in vogue does not help.

The tyranny of all your opinions and preferences imprisons you and feeds you just enough to keep you alive but not very coherent. They are decals on the train you ride that is full of unremarkable people all judging each other as inferior using slightly different versions of the same criteria.

All of your love affairs are a ruse. Any happiness you felt was because you were gas lighting yourself.

There was a correct path your life could have taken that would have lead to happiness, but you diverted from it long ago, and your attempts to compensate have been disastrous.

Time is escaping you like water escaping through cracks of aging, and with the water pours out personal secrets you wanted to keep. Everyone knows them now, but you think they are still secrets, and eventually you will drown in not enough understanding.

At your funeral, people will be having inaccurate thoughts about you. The rest of their thoughts will be about food and sexual conquest.

You will die regretting all the love you never got to express, and had you expressed it, it would only have caused discomfort shrouded in decorous graciousness.

The cliches found on posters and internet memes you abhor most are the ones that would have made you free to be happy.

Your limited language of pop culture references will ensure that all of your experiences are sterilized. No matter what you do or where you go, you will be insulated from transcendence. Fortunately, if you even begin to realize this and get depressed, you can always watch Buffy The Vampire Slayer reruns until it goes away.

There is at least one truth about yourself that you are engineered to never find out. You will dance around it, and maybe even approach it, but you will always be deflected and tossed back into unknowing and delusion. Like planets whirling around the sun, it will explode and engulf you before you can reach it. And this is your closest connection to the divine.

The comment section to every "50 Shades of Grey"-related article

a narcissistic sociopath. So I can't imagine anybody, having read my exhaustive deconstruction of all the abuse masquerading as acceptable intimacy in this poorly written series (complete with page numbers and screenshots), would be able to offer any rational excuse for overlooking it.

Comments (2,452)

WTF is Irony says:
Wow, you sure put a lot of effort into something you don't like. It's just a book! If you don't like it, fuckin don't read it then! It's none of your business what gets other people off. Stop telling people what their opinions should be, how to express themselves, and how to live their life. I think people should keep their opinions to themselves. #idon'tneedfeminism,  #IfThisListWasAccurateItWouldBeHundredsAndHundredsofThisPerson

CaptainFairness says:
Clearly your personal experience as an abuse survivor has influenced your opinion. I think your personal bias should exclude you from the conversation. Sorry you had to deal with that though. Stay strong! #goodperson

TheDude7 says:
I mean, he may be abusive and manipulative and all, but at least he owns it! Y'know what I mean?
      NedBlanders says:
      No actually I don't, could you please elaborate?
            TheDude7 says: 
            You know! Like, when someone is an awful person and they know it, but they like, keep being awful anyway, that makes it OK, right? Because they own it! ... Huh, now that I wrote it out, I realize how little sense that makes. Why do people say that? I know I said it because I didn't want to actually examine my opinion but... Wait... Fuck! All of my friends are racist! I'm gonna go kick their asses then move to another city.

GoodMan2 says:
Yes! This! I am in the middle of trying to save a woman who is with a real life "Christian Grey". She left me for a wealthy professional who is very handsome and regularly takes her on "vacation" to Europe (clearly to get her away from her family and friends). According to mutual friends, they have really amazing sex, too. Poor thing has no idea that she's a victim of abuse. And he gets really upset whenever she is seen with me. I just happen to run into her sometimes at the coffeeshop she goes to every morning before work (he helped get her a job at his friend's successful startup... controlling much?!?!), and he went with her one day and was very rude to me. Very territorial! I'm even beginning to suspect that he has brainwashed her to dislike me, because (read more)

FlowerLuvins says:
Ugh, I agree! I couldn't get through the first book, it was just all of the unhealthy. People! Sex shouldn't hurt! And then, like, he tells her not to cum at some point. That's not cool! Not what sex is about! Doesn't he care about her pleasure? Sounds like just another selfish pig. She needs to get away from that negative energy or it's gonna bring her down.

AlarmedUndergrad says:
I am a psychology major, and I read this and thought "Hmmm interesting". I definitely agree that everything Ana goes through will be psychologically scarring. Most of the people reading don't realize that she has low self-esteem, and he takes advantage of that. It's scary how many of my friends just don't get it, and they are ALL ABOUT this series. I have explained, in legitimate clinical terms, how it is warping their development as young adults, but for some reason that doesn't change their minds. I am putting together some sociological data to show them, let me know if you come across anything.

RedPillLinux says:
Aww, what's the matter? Nobody pay attention to you because you got dumped by an alpha and put on all that weight? Looks like someone's been on the carousel too long and has nothing to show for it. Don't worry, I'm sure some beta will take on your loose meat.
   (1589 replies)

RighteousWhiteous says:
Ok, i get that he's manipulative and stalks her entire life, and it sucks for her, but I don't think it's sexist. Feminists need to stop making it about them because #notallmen are Christian Grey. It's just one story, and the genders could easily be switched. Why isn't anybody analyzing it from that perspective? #reversesexismmuch?

AsianSexTouristGalt says:
I'm gonna pop some bubbles, be the unpopular voice of reason here and point out the obvious: she clearly gets what she wants out of this. He buys her the expensive stuff all women crave, takes care of her... oh, and then there's the earth-shattering orgasms he delivers with his huge "penis endowment" (so to speak), she seems OK with that. Obviously you male haters have never seen a woman tremble beneath you because you gave her permission to. For up to half an hour. It takes a while to get to that point, and most men are just grateful they can last 5 minutes then go to sleep. I'm just being honest here, so if you don't like the truth, go back to your comfortable lies, I don't have time for you. I guess I'm a feminist in some ways, because I believe women should have AT LEAST as many orgasms as her partner, probably more. In my experience, definitely more. Maybe you're just dissatisfied with the sex you've had, or if your a guy your probably insecure. Hey, sometimes the truth is hard to take, but there's no avoiding it. Sometimes, a woman needs to feel a little owned. Deep down, she wants her man to challenge her decisions. It shows that he cares about her, and that he'd fuck up anyone who messes with her, no matter where she goes. And it makes the relationship more rewarding for him, too. It's just biology, we can't avoid it.

365Conscious says:
Of course, WESTERN medicine only recently "decided" that BDSM isn't a diagnosable disorder. I mean (read more)

PleaseHelpMe says:
Please don't be angry at me, but I really liked the book. You just have to read between the lines, ok? I think Ana totally knows what she's doing. I mean, yeah she suffers a bit, OK a lot, but in the end he definitely changes. Or at least, he is clearly on the road to being approachable, and she'll be able to get over her emotional trauma because she's strong, and she'll finally (gently, gradually) confront him, you just have to read between the lines. I mean, I'm pretty sure the sex is good, why else would she keep coming back?

MissyBee says:
Thank you for writing this! Every sentence was like "Yes!" I went through something like this once... never again!
  DevilsAdvocado says:
  Just to play "devil's advocate", if you will, I mean, doesn't she have free will?
    MissyBee says: 
    But he manipulates her! He knows exactly what he's doing. For example, when he totally shuts down emotionally and makes her (read more)
      MmmmYeah,LikeThat says:
      Well yeah, he's abusive and manipulative, but she perseveres and eventually he changes. Sounds fine to me!
        MissyBee says:
        Except he doesn't "change"! She just learns how to work around his sociopathy, which is different because (read more)
           OoooooohFuckYeahKeepDoingThat says:
           I don't know though, maybe she was asking for it a little bit? I mean, she never said the safe word, but she could have...
              MissyBee says:
              ARRRRGH! But you're taking it out of context! You have to build enough trust so the sub isn't (read more)
                OhFuckOhFuckOhFuck says:
                 I mean, doesn't her arousal negate any possibility of rape?
                      MissyBee says:
                      Umm... NO! Physical arousal doesn't mean (read more)
                          OOOOOOOHHhhhhhhhMMMMmmmmmmhhmmmmMMMM says:
                          It's not like he has a gun to her head. She can leave at any time. And she does, after the first book.
                             MissyBee says:
                            (BASHING HEAD AGAINST DOOR) NO! Like I said before, in my articulate and citation-laden multi-paragraph reply above, (read more)
                                 Thanks! says:
                                 Eh, maybe. I guess we're all entitled to our opinions. Good night!

Entfernt Daily Standard Sunday Editorial: The Stachel Abomination

Using "Rick Steve's European Christmas" travel feature as a writing prompt, I challenged myself to write something without resorting to surrealism, sex, paranoia, or meta. 

Greetings, Standard readers of Entfernt! I hope your Christmases were all so merry it bordered on the depraved. Indeed I've received nothing but reports of seasonally appropriate bliss, apart of course from one incident. For countless generations, we the citizens of this charming settlement outside the Grindelwald village in the Bernese Alps, have enjoyed a festive tradition in the weeks leading to Christmas. Each year, twenty-four households are selected by committee and assigned to decorate their home for a day in the Advent calendar and prepare dinner for all the visitors. Understand, this is not an effort to hoist Christianity upon the general public¹. Rather, this is all in the spirit of service to the community. Not only does it tighten the knittedness of our village, but each serving and decorated home provides dinner for all guests, the homeless included. Almost² nobody has ever been turned away. Though I suspect a vagrant with the tenacity to land in a settlement with no roads and either a €145/day snowmobile rental or difficult 2-day hike away from the nearest train stop would be able to get a job tearing tickets somewhere. Generally, the only sort of "homeless" person who wanders here on foot is a startup millionaire between Bay Area leases who will most likely use his trip as a story to shill a performance drink or masculine crisis retreat.

But enough of that. Overall, 2014 was an exceptionally fine year. The Zwanghaft family (day 8) served 8 varieties of fondue with 8 loaves of braided bread that were each 8 feet in length. 8 feet! Did it occur to anyone to ask how they went about baking something so large? If so please write in, I'm mildly curious. The Goodpaster household (day 17) challenged us with pickled cow tongue, a rite of passage for the Goodpaster children³. In every home were found humble, earthy displays of God's messengers carved in knotty wood or dried squash, or shaped from twigs and dried grape vines, and the food was all hearty, traditional fare. Sausages, cheese and bread displayed on dark planks of elm shaped like nearby wildlife, pickled vegetables: fare that is warm and welcoming. Then there was the Stachel house, who so happened to draw number 24: Christmas Eve. Now, nobody can deny that we lead somewhat simple lives here in Entfernt. Many of us are builders or miners, while others spend their days procuring firewood or giving walking tours to vacationers. Every commute is a physically draining trek through hills of snow and often tempestuous gusts of wind. I think I speak for us all when I say that curry lentils and rice hardly nourishes to the soul, and does not represent the character of our settlement. Folks politely inquired of the ingredients and were told it was simply lentils and water with spices. So essentially, we were served a tea full of ruptured beans. When further pressed, they said some clarified butter was added for the sake of richness. If only the Griffpresse family was around, they could have learned of how their butter is in need of clarification. I had some of their chive butter on rye toast this morning and it seemed perfectly articulate to me.

How heartbreaking it was, watching children on Christmas Eve fumble with a greying brown mash that in texture and taste resembled the remnants of a potpourri cooker. My family was fortunate enough to have a hearty stew of venison and carrots left over at home, and a few people who would rather not be identified joined us with some bread and cheerful commiseration. However I imagine some families, expecting there to be an actual meal provided, may have spent Christmas eve either hungry and disappointed, or waiting for something to defrost. Indeed another anonymous family, unwilling to retire in such hunger, prepared what they thought would be a simple matter of egg, flour, and cheese, but ended up eating at an hour more fit for breakfast⁴.

Now, far be it from me to look unfondly upon diversity of experience. The Esempio family (day 14) made crepe-style cannelloni stuffed with 3 cheeses and seasoned minced beef, which I enjoyed immensely. But stuffed cannelloni is part of the Esempio family's cultural past. Perhaps redoubling my ire is the inauthenticity of the whole affair, and the cynical shallowness that we would accept their culinary appropriation without question. The Stachels have more generations here than almost anybody else. The joke is that they evolved their short legs and wide frames to steady themselves on skis and rocks! This cheap novelty comes off as phony, and it is deeply immoral that they subjected the hardworking citizens of Entfernt to an experiment that could not have possibly gone right.

While I want to commend those who tried to reduce the tension, I think it is best they learn from immediate social dissonance. One guest's comment that "Well, the himalayas are also cold and majestic" was well-intended, but thoroughly misguided. Though this is being published anonymously, I want the Stachels to know that many staff members and contributors at the Daily Standard stand behind this. That being said, my aim is not to incite a sort of passive-aggressive uprising. I just want the Stachels to know that there are people who disapprove of their behavior without adhering to those people the stigma of disapproval. Perhaps even the Advent Committee will take note of this public complaint and assume the Stachels have read it and learned their lesson, and thus be granted an opportunity to redeem themselves in the near future.

¹The general public being 94 people, 78 of whom are practicing Christians.
²There was one incident on record, in 1852. Apparently Richard Wagner says some, well say "divisive" things when he's had too much gluhwein. Legend has it that after he was removed, the remainder of the evening was spent trying to come up with one of those handy German portmanteaus for when something is "both dark and pale".
³This lack of squeamishness almost certainly explains how Neils Goodpaster moved to Brazil to be a marine biologist.
⁴Actually, it turned out quite well and may become a yearly tradition of insomnia and storytelling layered with crisp pastry for them.